Valuing Entertainment

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

One of the defining factors of entertainment is its ubiquity. It is distributed widely across cultures and commonly made as accessible as possible, ensuring that almost any citizen can easily engage with some form of entertainment. Entertainment thus raises a range of important issues about the functioning of culture and the relationship of the individual to society, which means that everybody – and every major institution – has something to say about entertainment.

Entertainment has traditionally struggled for recognition and acceptance as a worthy form of culture. According to many critics, the quality and level of sophistication of a product seem to vary inversely with how popular it is – if it appeals to a mass audience, it must be inherently “mindless”, “dumbed down”, and have some kind of corrosive effect on society. Audiences for entertainment have often been referred to in similarly derogatory, condescending terms: as unsophisticated, uncultured masses. Critical scholars have therefore often looked to find and highlight ideological, representational (e.g. sexism, racism, homophobia, classism), structural and financial concerns in the entertainment industries, so as to help ‘protect’ those audiences.

The academy has done a good job of addressing issues of value in the not-for-profit arts sector, which has to argue continually for the value of what it does in order to promote positive policy outcomes and public funding. It is also the case that – particularly since the 1990s – a substantial number of academics have taken a more positive approach towards particular entertainment products. However, these have typically been examined as instances of larger phenomena – “everyday culture” or “popular culture” – which are so broad as to include religion, workplace practices and a whole series of forms of culture which have little to do with entertainment. Because of the limitations of these approaches we have little academic understanding of the entertainment industries, and the texts, products, events, and experiences they produce. This panel redresses this shortcoming by presenting a range of answers, from differing disciplinary, institutional and definitional perspectives, to the question: how can we assess the value of various entertainment products and forms?

Sub Unit

• Popular Communication

Chair

• Stephen Harrington, Queensland U of Technology

Individual Presentations

• The Political Punctum: Resonance, Standpoint Theory, and the #YesAllWomen Meme - Ryan M. Milner, College of Charleston; Whitney Phillips, U of Oregon

• From Toyetic to Toyesis: The Cultural Value of Merchandising - Jason Bainbridge, Swinburne U of Technology

• Defining Entertainment: The Value of Industry Perspectives - Christy Collis, Queensland U of Technology; Stephen Harrington, Queensland U of Technology

• The Educational Value of Entertainment: Public and Private Adolescents’ Lives - Pilar Lacasa, University of Alcala; Sara Cortes, U of Alcala